Hurricane chief creates a storm

Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane Center, has lashed out at his superiors in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saying the agency is more concerned with image-building than bolstering storm forecasting.

Specifically, Proenza is perturbed because he says NOAA plans to spend as much as $4 million on a 200-year anniversary celebration. Meanwhile, he said, the agency has shortchanged hurricane research by about $700,000.

“I’m concerned that we’ve lost focus on our priority mission,” he said late last week. “It’s not rocket science; that mission is the protection of life.”

He added that the celebration was “rewriting history,” because NOAA was officially launched in 1970.

“It’s an ill-advised use of federal funds,” he said.

Proenza, who became director of the hurricane center in January, made his comments two weeks before the June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which is forecast to be more active than normal.

Of further concern, Proenza said, is a broader NOAA effort to publicize its name and diminish the profile of the National Weather Service and the hurricane center. NOAA is the parent agency of the National Weather Service, which is the parent of the hurricane center.

NOAA has proposed that all its related websites have the agency’s title in bold letters, and the weather service and other divisions would have their names in smaller type.

Emergency managers have complained that would create a credibility problem, hampering the effectiveness of severe weather warnings, Proenza said.

“To wipe out the National Weather Service from the Internet, when it is one of the most used sites in the entire federal government ... doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Anson Franklin, NOAA’s director of communications, disputed Proenza’s criticisms. He said the agency had a $4-billion budget, of which $300 million is spent annually on hurricane forecasting and research. As for the $700,000, Franklin said, the money was diverted to another hurricane research project -- requested by former hurricane center chief Max Mayfield.

Franklin said $1.5 million, not $4 million, is to be spent for NOAA’s anniversary, and that one of the agency’s predecessors, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, dates from 1807.